[deck=Disarm]Universal Attack 1With brute force or a clever twist, you disarm your target.
At-Will Martial, WeaponStandard Action MeleeTarget: One creature wielding a weapon or holding an object.Attack: Strength or Dexterity vs. ReflexHit: Target drops held object. Does not work on shields.Miss: Target may take an opportunity attack on the attacker, unless the attacker has the Improved Disarm feat.[/deck]

[deck=Trip]Universal Attack 1With a calculated strike, you knock your adversary prone.
At-Will Martial, WeaponStandard Action MeleeTarget: One creatureAttack: Strength or Dexterity vs. Reflex Hit: Target is knocked prone, if the target is your size, smaller than you, or one size category larger.Miss: Target may take an opportunity attack on the attacker, unless the attacker has the Improved Trip feat.[/deck]

The net effect for the most weapons will be the same and you avoid the oddness of swords being the best tripping weapons.

You're thinking of trip as being where you use your foot and trip them. That's not really what it is meant to be. It's supposed to be more like careful maneuvering of your opponent and using the terrain to your advantage or simply knocking them down with brute force.

That's not "stunting". That's actions the rules don't cover. I decided that for my games, the moderately powerful at-will abilities that anyone can use should have a drawback to prevent them from being abused all the time without investing in them somewhat through feats.

I only got the PHB today. I was saddened by the new Paladin, but extremely excited by the Warlord (because that's how I've always played a Paladin!) I don't know how balanced they are because I don 't have the rules down yet, but I like what I see.

I think it was fairly balanced in 3.5, with opportunity attacks (or "attacks of opportunity" -- whatever). If you attempted a disarm, a sunder or a trip, the target got an opportunity attack as an interrupt. If the opportunity attack hit, the disarm/sunder/trip attack failed.

This made the maneuvers (I like thinking of them as universal powers -- that's awesome) potentially useful at low levels, but if you wanted to use it at higher levels you needed to take the Improved Disarm/Sunder/Trip feats that kept those opportunity attacks from happening.

I'm not sure about the defenses. Should they all be Reflex? I can see either Fortitude or Will being appropriate for any of those. It sort of becomes a matter of who you want to be nerfed a bit -- Fighters, if it's Reflex or Will, Rogues if it's Fortitude or Will, Wizards if it's Reflex or Fortitude, and so on.

Don't get me wrong. I like the powers you've posted. I think the idea of treating them as universal powers is excellent. There should be more universal powers, definitely. When you think about it, some of the skills contain a few. I've just been thinking about these particular maneuvers a lot, and I'm still not quite sure how to homerule them in my own campaign.

Reflex is the best for all three, imo. The defender realizes what the attacker is doing and tries to get themselves or their weapon or shield out of the way. I guess I could remove the negatives and allow the defender an OA if the attacker doesn't have the improved feat version.

Remember that there AREN'T any minuses in 4e anymore, one of the things I kind of think is for the better, it's just easier to track.

Yeah, I need to update the powers in this thread with the updated powers from my own forum. I removed the penalties to the attacks and added opportunity attacks on a miss or damaging your own weapon on a miss.

Sunder was removed for a good reason. Nothing ****** off a player quite like sundering his hard earned magic weapon.

Tough poodoo. A weapon breaks, they disenchant it and use what's left to enchant a new weapon after they acquire additional material components and the funds and rituals.

Real life isn't fair and neither should everything be fair for the characters.

When you sunder those items you cripple the effectiveness of the party, trading a minor boost now (5% reduction in hit of the monster) for a long term penalty (not having a means to get passed DR X/Magic).

Magic items are again factored in 4e. the difference is, in 3e magic items were almost common, in 4E you will be lucky to get a single magic item for your character per level.

This means that although a sword may have a street value much less in 4e, the reality of it is, its much more expensive due to rarity of magic items. This means that sundering is even less than optimal choice on magic things.

When you sunder those items you cripple the effectiveness of the party, trading a minor boost now (5% reduction in hit of the monster) for a long term penalty (not having a means to get passed DR X/Magic).

Magic items are again factored in 4e. the difference is, in 3e magic items were almost common, in 4E you will be lucky to get a single magic item for your character per level.

This means that although a sword may have a street value much less in 4e, the reality of it is, its much more expensive due to rarity of magic items. This means that sundering is even less than optimal choice on magic things.

Optimal this... optimal that.... whoop de doo. It's up to the DM to balance the game and if you're sundering items they expect you to have, they'll find a way for you to find those items in a different manner. The magic threshold in 4e means monsters are balanced even if they're not wielding the +3 longsword or if they are. They attack the same. It's already factored in.

Almost every DM I have played with that runs standard monsters doesn't mess with standard monsters. The magic Item Threshold is one level +1 one of level one of level -1

Fighter doesn't care about wands so will sunder the evil wizard with one.
Warlocks though care about wands, suddenly the warlock instead of being on mark is behind the mark.

On the same token, Warlords probably won't care about the same weapons as fighters, and so are more apt to destroy items that doesn't fit them.

On the flip side, if I (as a DM) sunder all my PC's gear, I'm liable to lose players because of it. Magic Items are becoming increasingly personal equipment.

Sunder if brought back, will occupy the same 'don't do it moron' place it did 3e. You shouldn't waste your turn sundering mundane equipment, and sundering magic items puts behind the expectations of the MM. Which I bet is why it was removed in the first place.

Optimal this... optimal that.... whoop de doo. It's up to the DM to balance the game and if you're sundering items they expect you to have, they'll find a way for you to find those items in a different manner. The magic threshold in 4e means monsters are balanced even if they're not wielding the +3 longsword or if they are. They attack the same. It's already factored in.

Much as I hate to break into this discussion, Aluman has a point.

The math behind 3e assumes that you will have appropriate treasure for your level, you will have certain pluses and statboosters for your level, etc. Unlike 4e, however, where they explicitly state this and try to show DMs their reasoning, nowhere in the 3e DMG do they say "CR is calculated with the expectation that if you're level X, you'll have this plus to your sword, that much of a boost to Dex, and so on."

Thus, while you can leave it up to the DM to keep parties at the right power level--which is fine; that's part of a DM's job--there are many 3e DMs who either haven't DMed 3e long enough or simply don't realize that if you sunder that +2 sword they need to provide it in some other way, that if you don't have the right equipment the CR system breaks down as challenges grow slightly to extremely more difficult, depending on what you lack.

So while sundering magic items and party balance concerning it isn't a big deal in 4e (item rarity and personal connection to items being a completely different issue), you shouldn't fault him for his analysis/criticism of the 3e equipment paradigm, which from what I've seen is pretty accurate. Those missing +1's can add up under a DM who doesn't realize that CR expects you to have them.

Actually the +X's from magic equipment in 4e is much more critical than 3e, there is virtually no other way to get these bonuses.

The +Xs are harder to obtain, but the books tell you exactly what +X you're expected to have at any given point, and you're only required to have one or two sources of +X for any given roll--no more +1 AC from a ring, +8 from armor, +2 from an amulet, etc. Thus, if you sunder all of someone's magic item in 4e,

--they're only missing a few +X that you can quickly recoup, as opposed to a 10-20 point drop in modifiers,
--the DM knows that, if necessary, he should ensure that they get another item for encounters to be at the right difficulty level, and
--sundering doesn't become the go-to tactic because opponents are practically invincible with their Christmas tree of 13+ items.

Those are actually pretty decent powers. Question: Must they be taken in lieu of a class power? Or are they free for everyone?

As I was in 3.X, I'm leery of Sunder and Disarm. They're either too effective (shutting someone down completely for the low, low cost of an action that can be done at will), or completely irrelevant (most monsters don't use weapons or armor).

Also, since a monster's AC is no longer broken down into +X from armor, +X from dex, etc, it might create a pause in the action when you try to sunder a monster's armor.

For me, it ends up being one of those things where it seems silly to not be able to break someone's weapon or take it away. These are both effective and often-used tactics in real-life combat. They also present a way of effectively defeating enemies without necessarily killing them, which I'm always in favor of (I like adventure more than violence). The Disciple of Doom starts waving around his Wand of Whoop-A$$ and talking about how he's going to use it to conquer the world and raise interest rates, yadda yadda, until someone goes YOINK! and takes it away.

Should it be easy? No. But it should be something that the villain (and the PCs!) has to prepare for -- or else be unprepared.

And the risk of the PCs losing their own magic stuff is just the risk they have to face -- along with losing their lives, their limbs, their minds ...

It seems that Fort should be useful for avoiding trips and disarms. Somone tries to knock my weapon away, I hold on tighter (like athletics vs. Fort to escape a grapple). Someone tries to push me over, I stand firm.

I do think trip shouldn't have the weapon modifier, but I'd keep the -2 to hit. It does slightly discourage it, and it could be a very good tactic when one party member can take someone to the ground and everyone else gets combat advantage.